


When It's Quiet

by honeynpeaches



Category: Chainsaw Man (Manga)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Hurt, best to be up to chapter 80 of the manga before reading !, there is no hurt/comfort this is chainsaw man we die like men lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26429311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeynpeaches/pseuds/honeynpeaches
Summary: He can see faces behind his eyelids, the whites of their eyes preternaturally bright, mouths open and black. They smile at him with too many teeth. He still remembers all of their names. He still remembers how he cried for them, one by one. How he keeps crying as if it’s the first time.//Aki-centric character study fic because damnit I love him and I miss him very much. He was my favorite character and I will never be able to have a snowball fight without crying ever again.
Relationships: Angel Devil & Hayakawa Aki, Denji & Hayakawa Aki & Power, Hayakawa Aki & Himeno, Hayakawa Aki & Makima, How is that not an official tag ?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	When It's Quiet

There’s a bird on the sidewalk. A pigeon, pleasantly fat and cooing to itself. It pecks at the ground for a moment before escaping into the afternoon sky with a rustle of feathers. Aki watches it flatly, tapping the ashes from the end of his cigarette. It’s something that he’s done thousands, maybe millions of times before. It’s something that feels completely alien to him now as he leans against the fading brick facade. He feels askew, as if standing just to the left of his physical body. It’s a curious feeling, but he tries not to dwell upon it as he takes a long slow drag.  
He’s always living for these still moments, as if wandering aimlessly from one to the next. He has a goal, of course. But it’s one he’s been told time and time again is useless and impossible. Sometimes he’s told this with a disbelieving shake of a head. Sometimes he’s told out of an angry exasperation which he can’t help but think exists to take someone else’s hopelessness out on him. Once, only once, did someone react in a completely new way. They tried to get him to change jobs with them. To run away from the front lines. And when he refused, they bummed a cigarette with a wry smile and never left his side. 

He wishes that she had.

Sometimes he likes to pretend that there’s a second tail of smoke next to his own. He can almost hear her low laugh, bright but muffled behind one hand like a secret. He can almost feel the heat of her standing a little too close. He can almost feel the sly trail of her gaze across his face before she says something a little too familiar, and yet not familiar enough. 

There hadn’t even been a body to put in Himeno’s grave. (He visits anyways.) 

He holds the smoke in his lungs. Deep, deep, next to his heart. One second, two seconds, three seconds. Exhale. It’s something that he’s done thousands, maybe millions of times before. And yet this may as well be the first. Angel makes a small humming sound, moves to toss his ice cream wrapper in a trash bin, and then settles back at Aki’s side. This brief moment of respite feels like anything but, and yet Aki always craves these times. His thoughts get loud, pounding on his skull with bloodied fists. He can see faces behind his eyelids, the whites of their eyes preternaturally bright, mouths open and black. They smile at him with too many teeth. He still remembers all of their names. He still remembers how he cried for them, one by one. How he keeps crying as if it’s the first time. 

_Don’t you die._

_Cuz’ when I die, I want you to cry._

He did. (He keeps his promises.)

Angel doesn’t speak much when this mood settles over them, like he knows what Aki is thinking about. A moment of reverence between two vending machines next to an alley. These things always happen where you don’t expect them. They don’t need a temple or gleaming votive candles. They find you where you are. Angel blinks blankly up at the sky and a car peels away, making their ties flutter. Just for a moment, the whole city passes them by. Just for a moment, if Aki closes his eyes he can pretend someone else is here with them in the gentle afternoon light. If he closes his eyes, he can see her smile. Even if it isn’t natural. Even if it hurts. Aki’s life happens between moments like these, when the world around them hushes just a bit. He closes his eyes. It goes quiet. 

Power and Denji are bickering. Aki had hoped that with a full dinner slung low in their bellies that they would just fizzle out, but of course that isn’t the case. Still, it’s the harmless sort of bickering. He can stand that just fine. He steps out onto the balcony and takes a seat alone, canned beer in hand. It opens with a crisp _shhh-pop_ that used to signal the satisfying end of a long day. It used to mean pleasant company and a wry smile. Now the sound echoes, hollow, in his skull. Aki watches the sky turn blue to black, like a deepening bruise. 

Sometimes the sight knocks the wind out of his lungs, reminds him that all things are temporary. Everything changes. Nothing stays. But tonight he simply watches. For a while, he thinks nothing in particular. The beer is icy and fizzes pleasantly across the plane of his tongue. It’s not his favored kind, since he prefers a darker, headier brew. No, this was a pack that he’d purchased for someone else. There’s no use in wasting it now. Lazily, he raises the can to the sky before bringing it back down to his lips. It’s not clear why. He’s never felt reassured, or as if anyone was looking down and watching over him. It all simply feels...empty. But it’s just what you do, isn’t it? It’s just one of those things. You look up and you picture smiling faces. Smiling faces with the right amount of teeth and friendly eyes. Smiling faces that don’t grow too sharp behind your eyelids. 

He goes through the motions, time and time again. He cries as if it’s the first time. He wears his funeral attire, pressed and properly fitted. He squints up at the sky and tries to put the newly missing face together correctly in his mind. (Why does he always get the mouth wrong?) And then he goes home and hopes it won’t hurt as much the next time. (It always does.)  
There is the distinct temptation to light a cigarette. He’s running low, but he can always run to the convenience store around the corner. Wouldn’t it be luxurious? To sit back with a cold beer in one hand and a pleasantly glowing smoke in the other? The picture of vice. That old man Kishibe never seemed to have any qualms with that sort of thing. And maybe he was onto something? Aki can sit back and take a sip between each drag like his lawn chair is a throne. Like a dying man, clutching the final moments of earthly pleasure to his breast. 

He is going to die, anyways. (Who will cry for him?) 

One palm hovers over the cigarette pack by his side, like a finger over a trigger. When was the last time he looked over his affairs? For once, it may be someone else putting on that pressed suit and tie for him. It may be Denji. 

Ah. Denji. That’s right.

The boy has grown a lot in a short burst of time, changed before Aki’s eyes from a feral dog to someone who could grow up to be a good man. God, Aki has to hope. He has to, even when hoping is a fearful act. Even when hope is a delicate risk with the constitution of untempered glass. He has to. He takes a long sip and peers up at the sky and wonders if this is the last time. He wonders this every time, maybe because that makes things easier. It makes it easier to think of letting go. He is supposed to die, after all. It’s not every day your demise is forecast by the future devil himself. Vaguely, he wonders if Himeno would be disappointed to see him on the other side so soon. If there is another side. He nurses his beer and watches the lights steadily flicker on in the city. 

The air feels different in twilight, with everything in flux. A liminal time. Aki stares up at the sky the same way he’s seen Angel do so many times. He wonders what he sees up there that requires such studious observation. The stars are emerging, never quite as bright as they should be above the city lights. It’s wasted potential, really. All of those stars and yet he’s never seen a single one clearly. It’s funny, but he had never really noticed or cared before now. 

A small click and a sliding door announce a new entrant to the scene. Denji joins him quietly, mumbling that Power fell asleep on the TV remote with a small shrug. They sit together for a while. Denji’s looking better since he arrived in the apartment. He fills out his own frame now, the cut of his ribs less stark beneath pale skin. He settles more meekly than usual in the metal chair and folds one leg up across his thigh. Somewhere, a car alarm blares briefly before the owner clicks it off in a panic. Denji doesn’t even flinch. It dawns on Aki that his hands look slightly damp, the boy absently patting them against his sweatpants. That’s right. He’s gotten into the habit of doing the dishes after dinner. Since Aki cooks, that is. He’s good like that. (Too good.) 

_Ah, shit. Okay. Alright._ Aki takes a sip of his beer and looks back up at the sky. He’s going to do it. Denji is accustomed to scarcity, so he’ll know how to make the right decisions for himself and for Power. He’ll know how to manage Aki’s assets so that they don’t starve or miss rent. Never in his life would he have thought he’d end up leaving so much to a half-devil. Perhaps he’s gone soft? Or maybe he’s finally got a few screws loose? They always say you had to be a little off to make it as a devil hunter. (But then again, if that were true why is he about to die?) 

“Hey, Aki?” 

“Hmm?” 

“Can I try a beer sometime?” 

Aki snorts. 

“What?!” He has the decency to look a little chagrined. 

“Ask me again in four years.” 

Denji pouts, but seems to accept it. 

Yeah, Aki should make some changes to his will. Denji sighs and leans back to put his feet up on the balcony railing, companionable. It goes quiet.

The tide tumbles, unruly and yet with regularity, against the shore. Chaos and order standing hand in hand along the coast. Aki can hear it sighing as he approaches the beach, Angel at his side. He feels even smaller now, somehow. Aki stops every once in a while to help him take a sip of water, or smooth his hair out of his eyes. They try not to touch, but at this point it’s not clear if it really matters. (Even Angel has stopped telling him to be careful.) Tomorrow they face the gun devil. Tomorrow...he dies. The petulant cry to be saved from his own fate echoes in the back of his mind and he acts like he can’t hear it. If you give it any attention, it will claw at you. It will clasp onto your ankles and rub its snotty tear-streaked face on your pant legs. It has the face of a child. His face. He won’t look directly at it. There are larger things to focus on now, people he can’t let down. 

People. 

Yes, Denji and Power are people to him now. 

Funny how that happens when you aren’t looking. 

Makima’s figure along the shore seems distant and strange, and yet ephemeral. Something with a pull, like the softly glowing moon manipulating the tides from so far away. Sometimes he gazes upon her, thinks of what it would be like to reach out and to touch. Perhaps the thought is playing across his face a little too clearly now. Angel asks him why he likes her. The moon vanishes from his sky. All is black. It’s disquieting in a way that makes him want to wriggle out from under his own skin. 

Why does he like her? He can’t say. (He can’t remember.)

At this point, it isn’t clear if it really matters. (Angel doesn’t comment.) It’s awkward, trudging through the sand in black slacks and formal loafers. The grit is unpleasant against the leather soles of his shoes, grains leaking in on the sides and pressing up against his socks. Angle doesn’t complain, his face unreadable as always. There must be something in his head, Aki is certain. There’s always something there, even if he doesn’t let it touch his eyes. Aki’s seen it once, when they clasped hands as the typhoon devil nearly ripped them apart. There’s something else in Angel’s head, something Aki wishes he could coax forward with gently asking hands. But he knows not to pry. (Most of them do, at this point.) Angel had seemed so small in the hospital bed, wanting to rescue him from his own lonely fate. To keep himself from being haunted. To keep Aki’s ghost from plaguing his dreams. Aki wonders if he’d smile right in Angel’s head. (Probably not.)

Just as time does, they march steadily forward. 

Makima’s face is beautiful and serene. The skin is smooth and taut, wrapped perfectly over her cheekbones and around her skull. Just like always. How embarrassing, to come to her with this plea. To show her the creases in his forehead as he begins to cry. Aki’s hands fist at his sides and he sees Denji and Power’s faces flawlessly in his mind. Perfect smiles, natural eyes. Everything where it’s meant to be. Maybe Angel wants to save him, but he knows fate’s delight. It has its way with him every time. But if he can simply minimize the damage for those that will be left behind, to pre-emptively pull the glass shards from their chests before they even know they’re there… Angel tenses at his side, but Makima remains so, so, still. As if carved from marble. (Marble is cold. Is Makima cold?)

“I’ll make any contract...with any devil. Please, help me.” 

“Hayakawa...in that case, will you make a contract with me?” 

The waves roar in their ears. (Has he heard her right?)

“What are you talking about?” He can see the craggy surface of the moon in his mind, cold indifferent face hovering over the sea. (He thought it was beautiful.) He thinks it is hideous. The craters are too deep, too dark. Like rotting scars. He tenses. He doesn’t know where to look. He thinks the thoughts of a dying man, too quick and disarrayed to track. She enters his line of sight. She is all he sees. Her skin is smooth and taut, wrapped perfectly over her cheekbones and around her skull. 

“This is an order. Say you’ll make a contract.” 

It goes quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> Aki Hayakawa haunts my dick and I don't even have one. 
> 
> Catch me on Twitter @eatingpeachpits to make your timeline instantly worse. (18+ only pls!)


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